Tracking Sandwich Eaters

Thursday, December 29, 2005

The best thing about Dominic Zapanta and Mark Reyes's Mulawin the Movie -- Regal Films and GMA Films's paint-by-numbers film adaptation of the television fantaserye favorite -- may be the fact that after watching the movie, you get a strange craving for chicken. Barbecued.

That said, all you can really do is spend the rest of the movie commenting on the trivialities, because those are the only things that will keep you entertained in this fowlish quagmire. Trivialities like the zombie-ish line-reading that mistakes itself for dialogue (take that, Bianca King!). Like the horrid special effects that will elicit more giggles than awe. Like the strangely immobile characterization of Eddie Gutierrez as Dakila. (What is he doing here ba?) Like how Angel Locsin as Alwina, fights like a chicken beheaded -- a kind of silly chicken dance that involves a lot of tiny tinikling jumps and a semblance of Darna movements. Like how Richard Gutierrez's make-up artist should really be given the Frankenstein's Monster Award for Horrid Foundation. Like how Sunshine Dizon, as Pirena from Engkantadia ... if she really must wear a midriff-baring costume, should really learn to spell C-R-U-N-C-H-E-S, or even simply, just G-Y-M. All that the wasted Dennis Trillo does is stalk the cast and look sad. And all that Richard as Aguiluz proves is that he has no range as an actor, and belongs sadly to the limited frame of TV's small screen.

To say that Mulawin is a bad movie borders on kindness. It is the very equivalent of cinematic bird flu.